Posted on No Comments on Course Competencies Assignment

Course Competencies Assignment

I know you have seen the announcement about the Course Competency Extra Credit Assignment in the announcement in Canvas. I won’t take time here to go over that, but encourage you to make sure you read the announcement.

I do want to let you know that we did a pilot of this assignment in Spring term 1 in a medium-sized MSL course. Of the 29 students enrolled in the course, only 7 of those chose to participate in this optional assignment.

Here are the comments from the Instructor:

From your perspective did you feel the students who did the extra credit assignment were more engaged, about the same, or less engaged than the other students?

…the students that participated in this study were more engaged than the other students.  The students that participated would post discussion ahead of the due date or turn in assignments early.  I believe they were overachievers. The participants always wanted to make sure they were on time with their assignments.  Posting first and turning in assignments early.

Did the students who completed the assignment do better, about the same or worse overall than those who did not do the assignment:

all of the students that participated in the pilot study currently have an “A” in the class.

As the Instructor did you feel watching the videos submitted by the students gave you a better connection with them or had no effect?

Yes, I believe it allowed me to have a connection with those students. Why?  Because I knew they were going to have a great post or go the extra mile on their papers.  I enjoyed reading those particular papers.

From my perspective, this is a win/win and I’m proud that we are including this going forward. I hope you find the same results:

    1. that the students are more engaged
    2. that their overall performance is better
    3. and that you have a better connection with them.

Thus, encouraging your students to participate in the assignment, which opens to them one week before the start of the course benefits both you and them. I hope you will promote this with your students and that you see similar results.

Blessings,

Rick

Posted on No Comments on Canvas Tips and HouseKeeping

Canvas Tips and HouseKeeping

If you are like me sometimes things begin to clutter up in Canvas making it more difficult to get in and do what I want to do – namely dive into teaching my course.  Here are some tips that if you take a few minutes to do will make your life easier.

  1. If your “Course” link is getting cluttered with all your previous courses you can easily de-clutter. From the Courses link, scroll down to the bottom and choose “All Courses.” Once you do that you will see a list of your courses with a star next to each name. Each course with a star will show up as a favorite in your Courses. Simply click on the stars that are highlighted to un-highlight them. This will make accessing your material much easier going forward.
  2. Your inbox shows the number of unread items in a circle superimposed on the icon. It is a best practice, and honestly just common decency, to keep that down to ‘0.’ Take a little time to clean up your inbox – that will make it much easier to notice when a student is trying to communicate with you.
  3. On your Dashboard you should see Announcements from the Dean at the top – be sure to read these as they include important information for which you will be held responsible.  They are usually full of useful information that can make your life easier or let you know about new features/changes.
  4. On the Dashboard the hamburger menu on the right (three vertical dots – think a bun with a hamburger patty in the middle) gives you options for how you see your courses (these are the same ones mentioned in #1 above). Please make sure that “Card View is selected as we have found that the other options can be problematic.

There will be more of these in the coming days so stay tuned.

Posted on No Comments on Discussion Questions in Online Courses

Discussion Questions in Online Courses

In most cases online discussion questions in online courses fall into one of two categories. They are either essay posts, or true discussions. At Belhaven, the former is the typical format.

For either format, student engagement in the course and satisfaction with the course and the Instructor is increased when Instructors post responses to student posts. Obviously, posting a response to every post is unrealistic and is actually less meaningful than purposeful responses.  Ideally, we would like to see Instructors respond to student posts in three ways:

  1. If the student’s post is excellent, then responding to that, especially pointing out any parts that were particularly on the mark can have a powerful effect in encouraging students and reinforcing engagement overall.
  2. If the student’s post is off-target or just plain wrong, then posting a response is a necessity to keep the student from assuming that since you didn’t reply they must have done OK. In this case, the best response is to post a question that has the effect of directing the student toward the right answer or thought process. Alternately, but less beneficial, the response should point out the error and provide the correct information.
  3. Finally, and this one should be a regular practice, the Instructor posts a reply to the discussion at the end of the week. This can be a recap of the discussion posts, pulling out the best comments from different students, but should at least contain a response that reinforces the correct information for that discussion post.

In some cases, the discussion question is reflective rather than asking for an answer to a specific question. Even in these cases, the Instructor’s engagement in the discussion has a positive effect on student engagement.

I know you are teaching because you care. Since we aren’t policing Instructor responses to discussion posts it might seem like this is an area where you can slide. While there are some who do that, those who are taking their role seriously do not. Just checking the post responses for the last few weeks it is clear to me that more than half of those teaching are making an effort to engage with their students in the discussion posts. I’d love to see that number climb to 100%.

Blessings,

Rick